The ‘tension’ is between bureaucratic centralism, where a central
authority rules through appointed officials, and aristocracy, where
offices belong to a noble class who have some guaranteed degree of
independence from the central power.

What we actually have today is neither one nor the other, but a
self-perpetuating and largely unaccountable bureaucracy. It is not
quite yet a true aristocracy, though it is well on the way, but it is
nearly immune from “political influence”, to the degree it is
sometimes openly demanding such immunity.

So when Spandrell comments that there is no alternative to rule by
bureaucracy, I am not quite sure what he means. Certainly we have had
no aristocratic rule in a modern country for a couple of centuries;
the dominant ideology has been set against it. However, it does not
seem impossible to have a bureaucracy under genuine central control. I
get the impression that prior to World War II, the governments of
Britain and the USA were mostly in control of their bureaucracies:
they could fire officials and dictate policy.

Moldbug’s interpretation of US history is that the FDR Government was
entirely in sympathy with the bureaucracy, and effectively did not end
as later governments were not able to divert the Civil Service from
the path that FDR set it on.

In Britain, the Civil Service seems to have gained power over
approximately the same period, due to a combination of the destruction
of the old ruling class in the Great War, and the arrival of Labour
politicians, outsiders to the government system, who the Civil
Servants were both willing and able to defy.

My answer, therefore, is that it is possible for a government to rule
through a bureaucracy, rather than being ruled by it, and that this
was the normal situation prior to 1918, and to a lesser degree even up
to 1945. If the government were no longer subject to elections and
media opinion, it would be in a much stronger position to impose its
will on the bureaucrats.

As for aristocratic rule: if the existing civil servants were to
mainly hire their own children, we would be there — it is conceivable
that we could have a de facto aristocracy within a decade or
two. Replacing the existing bureaucracy with a different aristocracy,
such as the old titled families of Britain, is more far-fetched; but
given (somehow) the total ideological sea change that it would
require, there are no practical obstacles to it functioning.

Democracy affects the tension between the centre and the bureaucracy
in two major ways: as above, the precarious position of elected
politicians weakens them vis-a-vis their permanent officials
(Moldbug’s “rotor/stator” point). Second, the employment of very large
numbers of low-ranking officials becomes one of the main forms of
vote-buying. The junior officials do not have direct power over policy
in the sense that senior civil servants do, but they have democratic
power over questions relating to their continued employment and
working conditions. In Britain particularly, the Labour party is now
overwhelmingly the party of state employees. Without votes, the block
power of junior state employees would be vastly diminished.

While pondering the tricky questions that have come to be debated
within the reaction — such things as theconservation of sovereignty,
I was struck bythis lecture
in a series of Harvard’s online learning that I’ve been working
through on Chinese history.

This lecture, covering the Han dynasty, raises a lot of the questions
that we’ve already been looking at about how power should be organised
in a reactionary state.

(It doesn’t provide answers, which doesn’t matter since I’m not all
that concerned with what Harvard thinks the right answers are, but
it’s a good look at the questions).

The key slide is 25:

centralization versus regionalism

feudalism versus bureaucracy

hereditary right versus merit

military versus civil interests

inner court versus outer court

The lecturer says, “None of these institutional tensions … is ever
stabilized perfectly in Chinese history”

As important as these tensions are, I don’t think there are clear-cut
answers to them, even to the closely-related second and third tensions
which I’ve previously written about in some detail. I didn’t do more
than critique the progressive position which is unequivocally in
favour of bureaucracy over feudalism and meritocracy over hereditary
right. In attacking that position I did not establish that the
reactionary state should adopt the wholly opposite position.

In the absence of simple answers, we can nevertheless talk sensibly
about how a reactionary state would handle the tensions.

This whole discussion exists in the context of the long comment chain
at Outside In which considered the nature of limitations on power or
sovereignty. Crucially, we do not believe we can design a solution
to the problems of government. We are not writing a legal constitution
for a supreme court to enforce. What I am hoping to produce is
constitutional writing in an older sense: a description of how a good
government works, that influential people can point to when a question
that it addresses becomes relevant, and say, “as described in the
collected writings of AnomalyUK, this development which seems to be
happening is harmful and should be resisted; rather, the current
problems should be addressed in this other way”. It’s not guaranteed
to work, but nothing else possibly can. It’s what I mean when I talk
aboutthe war of ideas.

To demonstrate, consider yet again the tension between feudalism and
bureaucracy.

The reactionary argument for bureaucracy is the Moldbuggian one that
power should be undivided. If subordinates serve at the whim of the
sovereign, there is no struggle for power between the subordinates and
the sovereign, and therefore no policies adopted for their effect on
the balance of power between the two, rather than for their overall
effect on the realm. Establishing powers of subordinates that can be
exercised in defiance of the sovereign historically tends to lead to
civil wars between barons and the crown, and to stripping of assets by
aristocracies who get all the benefits of seizures, while the
long-term benefits of respecting private property of commoners accrue
generally.

The reactionary argument for feudalism is that undivided power is an
unrealistic aim; that underlings will in fact be able to exercise
power in private interests, since limitations of knowledge and time
mean they can never be supervised sufficiently, and therefore, on
formalist principles, their powers should be established and exercised
openly. This actually reduces the conflict over the extent of their
powers compared to the case where the powers are informal and
exercised surreptitiously. Further, establishing a formal class of
aristocrats stabilises the system by giving a large body of powerful
people an interest in preserving it. It breaks the link between
educational institutions and political patronage that defines today’s
cathedral.

There’s a lot more that can be said on both sides, and it’s worth
doing, but for now that serves as an example of how to look at the
tensions. In teasing out the arguments, we can link them to
circumstances, and show what circumstances favour particular
approaches and solutions.

It is easy to see how a state can move between bureaucracy and
feudalism. Starting from bureaucracy, if the sovereign is unwilling or
unable to overrule his officials, they will consolidate their power,
and collectively take control over selection of entrants to their
ranks, eventually reaching the stage of being able to hold offices
within families. Conversely, a stronger sovereign will bypass
established families and institutions, and divert influence to
appointed officials of his own choosing, loyal to him personally. Both
of these courses are familiar.

WhatI have argued for most recently
is a formally established but weak aristocracy. That would not be
immune from either being bypassed or growing more powerful, subject to
circumstances and personalities. The justifications for it are:

It provides a pool of officials under higher than normal
expectations of loyalty and good behaviour

Hereditary privileges are a reward for loyalty and achievement

It prevents some other institution with an important purpose from
becoming a de facto aristocracy

If a strong king can rule well without relying on the aristocracy,
that is probably a good thing, but the three justifications above
become three dangers. His successors may not have his advantages, and
therefore may struggle to find trustworthy underlings either among a
disgruntled aristocracy or a competitive and anonymous commons. The
powerful may scheme to find ways to privilege their descendants if
there is no approved path to do so. Other institutions (educational,
media, military) could acquire aristocratic pretensions and compromise
their proper function in doing so. If these things start to happen,
the cause should not be a mystery.

Moldbug’s coining “The Cathedral” has caught on and been the subject
of much debate, but his other term “The Modern Structure” less so,
which is a shame.

The Modern Structure is the constitution of the United States of
America, in the sense that that term was originally used — a
description of how the government of that country operates. Other
Western Democracies have very similar constitutions.

The centre of the Modern Structure is the Civil Service. They actually
carry out the business of government.

In theory, they are under the control of Politicians, but in reality
the politicians are at most peers of the civil service, and in many
cases completely subservient.

In theory again, the Politicians are controlled by the
Electorate. However, the influence of the Electorate is slight: enough
to tip the balance occasionally when the issue is close, but not to
dictate anything. Further, on any issue, the majority of the
electorate are completely ignorant, and depend on the media for
information about the issue and how they should vote.

Meanwhile, business has at least as much influence on the politicians,
and additionally has direct influence on the civil service (through
lobbying and other forms of corruption).

In terms of power over government policy, then, the map of influences
look something like this:

That is less than half the story, however. In the long run, what
matters is not how the noisy controversies of the moment get resolved,
but rather what is or is not controversial in the first place. That is
the matter of the dominant ideology — what all the people in this
network believe about what is and what should be.

The ideology is not fixed: it has changed enormously over mere
decades. Who has influence over ideology?

The high status of the organs of the modern structure make them
significant, but there are other important influences, and other
directions of influence within the network.

This diagram shows the flows of ideological influence. For this
purpose I have broken out of “Education” the most crucial organ of
ideological influence — “Elite Academia”. This is where ideology comes
from.

It is true that, in a sense, everything influences everything
else. However, a fully-connected undirected graph has little
information content, so the diagram only shows what I think are the
biggest influences on what people believe.

I have left out business from the ideology diagram. My view is that
while business and lobbyists are able to significantly affect policy,
they has very little influence on what people believe. They perhaps
have the capability of causing such influence, but in practice
businesses are primarily in competition with each other, and it is
much more profitable for each player to spend his influence on
favouring his own narrow interests rather than on promoting a general
business-oriented ideology. To the extent that a business-oriented
ideology exists, it is developed by enthusiasts, and funded more by a
few eccentrics such as the Kochs rather than by moneyed interests as a
whole.

However, this is a disputed point, so here’s the diagram with them
added back in, and with the Conservative media broken out from the
respectable media.

With or without business interests, it is in the network of
ideological influence that we see “The Cathedral” — Elite Academia and
Respectable Media — at the core. Ideology flows out from them.

It should go without saying, that this is not intended to be the last
word: it is my interpretation of what is mostly general knowledge, and
there is a lot of room for refinement, correction and expansion.